


merely a man

by Kells



Series: gifts, requests, and other little bits [11]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Female Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2509652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kells/pseuds/Kells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magneto, Mystique, and Quicksilver- the saddest Brotherhood ever formed, according to Pietro- rescue a powerful teenage empath and her apparently-human anchor from one of Trask's labs. Charles Xavier wonders why. Erik Lehnsherr does too. Steph and James do what Steph and James do, but this time with mutant powers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from Magneto: Not a Hero, Vol. 1- the quote I read, in context, is "I am no hero. Merely a man who has seen and done and endured what can never be forgotten or forgiven.”

When Raven had told herself she’d never get involved with Magneto again, she'd been quite sure she meant it. That was before Erik had shown up, not a few weeks after trying to kill her but a full three years later- bearded and depressed, having finally figured out that all he’d accomplished with his stupid stadium stunt was to provide thousands or millions of human witnesses with concrete evidence that mutants were as dangerous as Trask had been saying all along. He hadn’t asked her to come back, either- he’d just shown her the plans for a facility where Trask had been known to keep prisoners and asked if she’d like to help him break in to make sure there was no one left in there that he should be breaking out. Just once, Raven had said firmly, and they’d been on their way.

Of course there had been prisoners- malnourished, mistreated mutants who looked at Magneto with a terrifying blend of fear and awe, thanking him and avoiding his steely gaze with equal determination.

It didn't take them long to find the plans for other facilities. Trask might be behind bars, they realised quickly, but his organisation was still vast and well-funded. Raven clenched her fist, and then her jaw, and made herself smile at Erik.

“Maybe one more time.”

Five years later, they had settled into not only a comfortable routine but also an apartment that felt quite like a home. It wasn't just the two of them, which might have been awkward in all the latent things it wasn’t- or wasn’t yet, with Erik Raven wasn’t always sure- but the two of them and a 23-year-old named Pietro Maximoff. Erik had met the kid through Charles and Logan- a major part of the whole debacle of which he and Raven had tacitly agreed never to speak if they could help it- and who had turned up at one of their intended break-ins with the announcement that he’d been following their progress and would totally tell that Xavier, okay, if they didn’t give him a way to help. Erik had pinned the boy to the gate by his own headphones and told him in detail what he would do if Pietro breathed a word of anything to Xavier, _okay_. Immediately afterwards, he had stunned both the boy and Mystique by telling Pietro not only their whole plan but also the part Erik thought was best suited to his particular abilities. Raven had considered the possibility-not for the first time- that Erik had finally lost it, but it had taken very little time- which made sense for the mutant who would soon start calling himself Quicksilver- for the young man to prove what an asset he could be. 

“Back,” Pietro announced as if they could have missed his reappearance. “Hallways disarmed debugged and pretty much dismantled! You’re so welcome. This place isn’t too bad actually no one seems very badly injured and they’re all mostly looking after themselves on the way out. The plastic tasers were cool so I saved a few do you guys want some?”

Mystique did, but Magneto waved him off impatiently. Raven saw Pietro’s eyes widen as a woman with rocky skin and molten-lava eyes grabbed Erik’s arm without warning, but Magneto barely reacted.

“What do you need?”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Erik’s eyes gentled, just a little; he nodded sedately.

“The Brotherhood looks after its own.”

Raven just about managed not to roll her eyes- it would take less time to say ‘you’re welcome,’ but for some reason Erik preferred the rhetoric of mutant exclusivity. She decided to focus on the task at hand instead of pondering ideology while trying to get out before the police- or the X-Men- got in.

“Is that everyone?”

The woman who was still watching began to nod, but then her eyes darted back the way she’d come.  

“Did someone get the empath and her boy? They’ll be in the labs.”

Quicksilver was already rifling through the files in the abandoned office a couple of doors away. Through the glass door, they watched him pull one up and flip through it at his usual lightning pace.

“Empath empath where’s an- empath! Stephanie Rogers. Whoa! Class five empath too.”

He looked up, curious. “What d’you mean ‘her boy’? She doesn’t have a kid does she? Says here she’s sixteen.”

The woman shook her head.

“Trask found them together in some orphanage in the outer boroughs; the girl’s powerful as anything but she goes nuts if anyone touches him.”

Magneto wore the wary look that all mention of mental abilities inspired in him- and in Mystique, to a lesser degree.

“Some kind of telepathic bond?”

“It must be, right?”

Quicksilver was speeding through the documentation at a rate that left Mystique wondering whether fire was a greater risk than papercuts.

“James Barnes,” he announced. “Sixteen as well. Says he’s human. Can that be right? Shows no X- gene but oh my god Trask is a lunatic.”

Raven blinked, going over to look.

“Does it say _that_?”

“He thinks the kid’s mutation is ‘the ability to mask mutation’ ‘cos he’s the girl’s anchor so he can’t just be human but his bloodwork says he _is_ just human so Trask figures that’s the trick. It says they’ve been trying to ‘trigger the reaction’ so they can ‘isolate the mutation effect’. Does that mean anything to any of you?”

Raven shook her head, but the woman with the volcanic features nodded grimly.

“Do you know what it’s like to share space with an empath while Trask's people try to ‘trigger reactions’ in the only person she cares about?”

She shuddered, her fiery eyes a little damp. “We’ve all had the nightmares. I hope you can help them.”

Erik swept forward wearing one of his more murderous scowls.

“We should find this lab.”

They weren’t too far away. Quicksilver darted ahead- they knew he’d found them when he froze, eyes wide and almost frightened.

“Erik-”

The doors opened soundlessly. By the time Mystique and Magneto caught up, Quicksilver had freed the girl and was helping her- very, very patiently for him- over to a young man barely staying on his feet next to what must have been an operating table. The teenagers fell together in an embrace that was physical and mental at the same time- they never said a word, but you only had to look at them to know it wasn’t for lack of anything to say.

“Gross,” Pietro murmured cheerfully. “I’m glad we know they’re definitely not siblings.”

“Can they walk? Even the NYPD will be wise to us by now.”

 Erik spoke briskly, but Raven was sure he sounded rougher than usual.

“Magneto.”

The prisoner Pietro had said was called James Barnes straightened up as he realised there were other people in the room, tightening his protective hold on the girl in his arms. He spoke calmly, even authoritatively, but there was an underlying tension in his expression. “We don’t want trouble. Just let me get her out of-”

No one was expecting Quicksilver to cut James off by wrapping him and Stephanie in a crushing hug.

“You don’t have to bargain for it. No one’s gonna hurt you kids again- not even Lord Vader over there. Scout’s honour! Not that I’ve been a scout. Have you been a scout Erik? My honour anyway. We’re not gonna let them come after you and we’re not gonna do anything you don’t want done. We just want you both out of this place so you can forget you’ve ever heard of it. I’m gonna back off now.”

He stepped back, sheepish but still grinning, and let the startled teenagers pull each other to their feet. When they faltered, Erik took the young man’s elbow in a steadying grip.

“You’re not supposed to help me,” James murmured, almost reproachful. “You know I’m-”

“Not one of us?”

Stephanie’s resentful, defensive anger left Raven and Pietro clutching at each other as the floor seemed to tilt and melt. Her voice was fierce and clear, a far cry from the hoarse whisper Raven had imagined to match the frankly heartbreaking figure she cut.

“He’s _not_ one of _them_.”

“Steph.”

James pulled her closer, soothing in tone and touch. “It’s not worth it, tin man can’t even hear you with that get-up on.”

Erik, protected from the fallout of his own callousness by Shaw’s bloody helmet, nodded serenely at the empath before turning his attention back to her protector.

“Because I speak of mutant superiority, then.”

James was matter-of-fact about his open defiance of the man who was more or less keeping him on his feet.

“Because you want to take them all off somewhere without us, but I’m not ever gonna leave her.”

Stephanie’s vise-like grip on the boy’s hand said clearly that she had no intention of letting him, either.

Pulling off his glove, Erik pushed back his sleeve and let the teenagers see the tattoo that had, in too many ways, come to define the man who had become Magneto.

“You know what this is?”

They both nodded gravely.

“Then you know the Brotherhood of Mutants is not my only allegiance.”

Stephanie’s eyes were very wide; she glanced at James, who nodded once before tugging on his collar to reveal an ugly incised mark across his collarbone. Mystique gasped and Quicksilver swore, but Erik didn’t seem surprised.

“They did that in the labs at Auschwitz too.”

Raven flinched, but James Barnes was spellbound as Erik smiled quite kindly.

“You see? There are things we will not have to explain to each other. A brotherhood of more than blood, maybe.”

The boy nodded, apparently too overwhelmed to speak. He did let Erik take his arm, though, and Raven thought it must be helping that Stephanie had yet to release his other hand. They went on in silence, but it wasn’t really in Pietro’s nature to be quiet longer than he absolutely had to.

“So we’re keeping ‘em right? Please? _Please?_ It’s not a real brotherhood if there’re only three of us. That’s a trio. We’re a trio. The Trio of Mutants. That’s not bad-ass at all.”

“With us you’ll be a quartet,” James pointed out, sliding into the back seat of Raven’s beaten-up sedan. The kids had looked a little taken aback, but Erik had pointed out in his deadpan way that he couldn’t be expected to levitate all of them everywhere he went, and they’d been content to take his word for it. Stephanie was curled around her anchor, clingy or protective or both, and James was stroking her hair idly as he bickered good-naturedly with Quicksilver.

“How is that more bad-ass?”

Pietro, grinning broadly, already looked more at home with the younger couple than Raven had ever seen him.

 “You’re really fiesty for a nearly-dead kid.”

He choked, suddenly green around the gills, and reached across James to prod the scowling empath in reproach. “What was that for? It was a compliment!”

“Thanks,” James said dryly, smiling a little as he nudged Stephanie gently. “Cool it, you. He didn’t do anything.”

“Sixteen,” Mystique murmured to herself.  It sounded so young, now, but she hadn’t been that much older than that when she had met Erik for the first time. Magneto, who had been unusually docile about sitting in the front seat instead of driving himself, was glaring out the window like every shrub they passed was a specific reminder of grim personal failure.

“What is it?”

He scowled, but Raven saw the real anxiety under his bluster.

“You must remember what happened the last time I was left in charge of damaged teenagers.”

Raven would never need reminding that she was one of only three survivors of that initial group. Erik’s voice was a low, self-loathing growl.

“Charles would have a much better idea of what to do with them.”

That was almost definitely true. As far as Raven knew- which was pretty far, because Hank still sent her notes from time to time and Erik was a shameless stalker who liked to know exactly what Charles was doing so he could decide whether to scoff or be bitter and resentful on any given day- the second incarnation of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters was doing very well. James and Stephanie seemed to have reached a different conclusion, though- the boy leaned forward, almost eager in his distaste.

“You don’t mean that crazy psychic? Charles Xavier?”

“You _gotta_ let us keep ‘em now. Please please someone tell Xavier that the word on the street is he’s a crazy psychic.”

Pietro was close to purring with satisfaction. Erik ignored him completely, watching James and Stephanie in the rear-view mirror.

“And what exactly is your objection to Charles Xavier?”

They were all waiting for James to answer, but Stephanie spoke up for the first time since she’d taken Erik to task about drawing the lines between her and her anchor.

“He’s got no right.”

“Shields up,” James murmured, and Raven’s increasing vertigo receded quickly. Stephanie went on in the same offended tone.

“The way he gets into people’s heads- just barges in and makes them do what he wants. It’s scary, and it’s nasty, and if he _ever_ tries that on my James I’m going to hit him with a brick.”

James, blushing faintly, pressed his lips to her temple with a smile that was teasing and reassuring at the same time.

“What’s Charles Xavier ever gonna want with me, Steph?”

Stephanie glowered.

“Doesn’t matter. If he tries it on I’ll whack him.”

“With a brick.”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.”

“‘Course. ”

Prepared to shut Pietro up before he made fun of them, Raven glanced over only to find Quicksilver staring straight forward,  fascinated by the spectacle of Magneto, the Master of Magnetism, suffering from a fit of silent laughter so violent that there were tears streaming down his face. He dabbed at his face with one of his elaborate gloves, still chuckling.

“With a brick,” Erik gasped. “I almost hope you’ll get the chance.”

Stephanie smiled tentatively, not quite at ease, but didn’t speak again. Erik turned to Raven.

“Do we have anywhere to put a pair of teenagers?”

“We could split two to a room, girls and boys.”

Pietro looked quite enthusiastic considering he was a 23-year-old offering to share his room with a boy who would almost certainly turn out to be dealing with post-traumatic stress. “The Dormitory of Mutants. And James. You can have your own room since you’re running the operation.”

He would have his own room, Erik corrected him evenly, because it was his damn apartment. Raven turned to Stephanie, who was watching carefully.

“Are you sure there’s nowhere you’d rather go?”

The empath and her anchor conferred in their heavy silence while the other three watched- Raven patient, Pietro openly fascinated, and Erik- pensive, maybe. After a moment, Stephanie shrugged and let James answer.

“You don’t have to do this. We can find our own-”

“That’s not the question,” Erik interrupted sternly. “Is there somewhere- somewhere _safe_ , with people you know- you want us to take you?”

He nodded decisively when they both shook their heads.

“And you’re certain you won’t consider going to Xavier.”

They were even surer of that than of their lack of better options.

“They can have my room,” Raven decided; she’d seen Stephanie’s panicked look at Pietro’s proposed arrangement. Erik might have preferred that- he could be old fashioned about things at unexpected moments- but he just nodded.

“We’ll think of something more sustainable if this becomes a long-term arrangement.”

“Which means he’s considering a long-term arrangement,” Pietro supplied brightly. “Which means he likes you which means you’re definitely in the one percent! Well done! Welcome to the club.”

James smiled, comfortable enough to be a little sly.

“Is it a Club of Mutants?”

“Three mutants and you. I really think that’s the whole club. Is that the whole club? Erik is there no one in the _whole world_ you like apart from us?”

Erik’s face gave nothing away.

“What on earth made you think I like _any_ of you except Stephanie’s brick?”

Pietro looked nothing short of delighted when both of the kids sharing the back seat with him dissolved in helpless giggles, clinging to each other- as they had been the whole time, but now with rapturous amusement instead of like their lives depended on it- in their mirth.

“Teenagers,” Erik grumbled. “I really thought I’d done my time.”

He glared at Mystique.

“For the record, I blame you.”

“You’re welcome,” Raven grinned instead of pointing out that she hadn’t so much as cast a vote.

* * *

 

“Professor,” Hank McCoy muttered outside the now-defunct facility, “You might want to look at this.”

The security footage Hank had retrieved was not from the building itself at all, but CCTV monitoring a nearby bank. It didn’t reveal too much, unless you were of a mind to know for sure that the people herding those frail youths into a very deliberately anonymous-looking car were none other than Erik Lehnsherr and Raven Darkholme.

“I didn’t even know she was back in town,” Hank confessed, trying not to feel hurt that it hadn’t occurred to her to tell him. 

“Do we know who the children are?”

Hank shrugged- the images he had pulled had revealed only that they were too thin, that the boy's head was shaved as though for surgery, and that neither had looked like they would make it very far without a firm grip on the other.

“We found these files away from the office,” Scott Summers offered as he and Jean Grey came up behind the professor. “One of them is a class-five empath.”

Hank breathed in sharply: Erik Lehnsherr on the lookout for allies who could approximate Xavier's abilities was never good news for anyone. Charles let his mind wander even though he knew too well that it wouldn’t find what he was searching for.

“Erik,” he sighed. “What can you be thinking of now, old friend?”


	2. Chapter 2

“What kind of plan requires a shapeshifter, a speedster and an empath?”

Charles smiled at Scott- it was as good a starting point as any.

“Erik sees his struggle as largely ideological.”

“Which means…?”

“He will be depending on the girl. The others are extraneous, except to convince her, and perhaps as a demonstration of his inclusiveness.”

“Professor,” Hank said hesitantly. “Even I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

It was a question of winning hearts and minds, Charles explained. With a telepath, Magneto would be able to make people listen while he made his case for mutant separatism.

“With an empath it might not matter whether anyone agrees- they’ll  want to join him in any case.”

It had worked in Nazi Germany, after all, and that was without the ability to turn the crowd without saying a word. Erik would be the first to say he had learnt a great many valuable lessons from the Reich. Jean, ever the innocent, shuddered and shrank back against her boyfriend.

“That’s horrible. You don’t really think he’s going to use that little girl to start a war, do you?”

Given that they were talking about Erik Lehnsherr, Charles thought it was frighteningly plausible.  

“He’ll have to convince her first, though. Surely an empath will be able to tell that the guy’s a raving maniac.”

Hank agreed with Scott at once, but the professor looked very grim.

“A frightened, lonely girl saved from the worst of human cruelty by Magneto and Mystique? He might not even have to tell her how he lost his mother.”

Asked what the X-Men could do about it, Charles looked distant and regretful.

“Precious little that would not make his case for him.”

 “So, what, we just have to wait?”

They did, Charles said, and looked pointedly out the window until his students got the hint and left the office to go back to their various drills.

“What is it, Hank?”

“Are we just leaving the boy to die?”

Charles turned, taken aback by Hank's real distress.

“The boy?”

“The human boy Trask calls her 'anchor.' Are we really leaving that kid alone with Erik Lehnsherr?”

Charles laughed outright.

“Either the boy isn’t human, or he’s not alone with Erik Lehnsherr.”

Hank was shocked, even dismayed, by what Charles was implying.

“You think Trask was right? His mutation masks the mutation?”

Charles shrugged, much calmer than Hank could ever be about that possibility.

“Perhaps their tests were wrong. Erik must know that only a telepath could help a class-five mutant contain her power the way these people describe.”

“But then-“

Charles sighed.

“Hank. Erik wants the girl’s cooperation; she will not give it unless the boy is safe. I promise we will find them, and save them, before Erik’s resentment exceeds his ambition.”

“This time,” Hank muttered, but let Charles turn back to his paperwork. Magneto wasn't a lab rat by any stretch, after all- if he really wanted to pursue the question they'd probably find out when Raven turned up at Hank's door. 

* * *

  _They’re thirteen when the men come looking for her._

_“There’s a gentleman here to see you,” the nurse says; around them, lots of kids look up with interest and envy in their eyes. Steph’s hand closes around her best friend’s wrist._

_“I’m not going.”_

_“It’s fine,” James murmurs, pulling away. He won’t be the reason she doesn’t get adopted._ _“I’ll find you, Steph, okay?”_

_Her grip only tightens._

_“You won’t have to find me, ‘cos I’m not gonna lose you.”_

_“Steph,” he pleads, trying to be sensible, but it’s too late for that._

_“What’s the trouble? Which one is Rogers?”_

_The man who’s here to see Steph has come to speak for himself, and James only needs to look at him to know he can’t let someone like that take his girl away. He seems to be the only one who thinks that, though- everyone in the room is suddenly staring at the pair of them._

_“Take her,” the guy says, and suddenly there are more of them. James looks from the men drawing closer to the nurse who let them in- who has a hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes but hasn’t said one word to stop them- and understands that they’re going to have to save each other because no one else will._

_“C’mon,” he mutters, and they run._

 

Erik found them huddled together in the corner of the room, James already combing his fingers through Stephanie’s hair and praising her quietly for getting a handle on things so quickly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered when she saw him. “I’m sorry, we can fix this, please don’t make us-”

And then Pietro was there, half-strangling the teenagers in an enthusiastic embrace that left them bemused but not unhappy.

“Not your fault. No one’s gonna make anyone do anything except maybe go back to bed.”

She smiled tentatively, but it was only when Erik nodded that James relaxed.

“I’ll say it again, Stephanie. None of this is your fault, and neither of you will be punished."

The boy’s eyes creased a little, which they had found was his most natural effort at a smile- barely the suggestion of one, really, but probably more than he’d ever needed with an empath for his sole companion.

“Try to sleep,” Erik suggested.

“Or stay up all night and plan your wedding! No black and yellow okay it’ll make us look like crime scene tape and also X-Men and if Erik is ashamed of us Raven will have to walk you down the aisle alone if she ever gets back from wherever she’s gone.”

Erik glared and James blushed scarlet, but Stephanie’s startled amusement made all of them smile. Pietro beamed.

“My ideas are way better than Lord Vader’s. Good night smallfry!”

“They're sixteen," Erik pointed out sourly.

“I’m nearly half of that older than them," Pietro argued. "And you’re more than twice their age. They’re little.”

It was too late at night to deal with Pietro’s brand of logic, Erik decided, so he just waved his hand semi-threateningly, as if the wretch couldn’t get out of the way in less time than anyone would have needed, and went back to bed himself.

_They get pretty far, considering, but then they have no way of knowing that there are even more of them waiting at the bottom of the stairs._

_“Is that her?”_

_Steph gasps as a needle meets her arm. James yells and struggles, but they’re so much bigger than he is._

_“She’s the one. Let’s go.”_

_They pick her up like she’s a sack to be lifted; Steph is already in a flood of tears._

_“I’ll find you,” James says again, knowing he can’t do anything for her now but also that he won’t ever give up. "_ _Steph, swear to God I’ll come for you.”_

_“No,” she whispers, and suddenly his arms are free. Steph tumbles to the ground as the man who was holding her collapses, clawing at his face. Gradually they realize it’s not just those two- all the guys who came for them are completely out of it. James has never seen Steph look so frightened._

_“Am I- did I do this?”_

_He thinks she did. They’ve known for a while that Steph can do …something. When she’s happy other people are too; one time someone made her cry, and a couple other people burst into tears with her. Bucky doesn’t know when it started- he learnt to see the world through Steph’s eyes before he even realised he was doing it, really, so it doesn’t feel that new for him. What he does know is that Steph is sick and scared, and if he doesn’t do something she’s going to scream or pass out._

_“We can fix it, Steph.”_

_She looks at him with terror in her eyes._

_“You’re not scared of me.”_

_It makes him want to cry, except there isn’t really time for that._

_“Never. Never ever, I promise. C’mere.”_

_In the midst of everything that’s going wrong around them they have a whole few seconds’ peace, just the two of them, safe in each other._

_“You’re okay,” James says quietly, and for a moment thinks he can feel Steph’s dread retreat. "_ _We really have to go, Steph.”_

_“You’ll stay with me,” she whispers, half question and half command._

_“Forever an’ always,” James promises, a phrase they use for all kinds of things, and Stephanie smiles._

_“God damn it, he’s one of them as well!”_

_This time the needles graze both their necks, and when they open their eyes again it’s Steph who screams and struggles as the men in those white jackets reach for James._

They were still in bed when Erik got to their room that time. Pietro had beat him there, and he seemed to have skipped recrimination and reassurance altogether: Stephanie was sipping hot chocolate blissfully while James dipped a cookie in a glass of milk with something almost like a real teenager’s grin on his face.

“Everything all right in here?”

They looked up almost guiltily. Stephanie held out her cup in invitation, then turned to glare at James when he poked her side, expectant.

“Go on,” he murmured, and she sighed long-sufferingly.

“Pietro made us hot chocolate. Want some? How come Raven’s always gone?”

James positively beamed. Erik shook his head, but took a seat on the edge of the mattress and told them that Raven was working an angle on their on-going investigation. Stephanie frowned, looking to James for help and scowling when he shook his head, resolute.

“Are you gonna go as well?”

Raven would need back-up at some point, Erik admitted, but so far she thought she might only need one of them at a time.

“We’ll tell you,” Pietro promised before Erik put together why both James and Stephanie looked a little sick at the thought. “You’re not gonna wake up and find yourselves alone again okay? If we ever have to leave you on your own you’ll know about it before and how to find us if you want to.”

Erik would never have promised the second half of that, but he kept that to himself as he collected cups and watched Pietro tuck the kids in like they were much younger than they were.

“Shut up,” Quicksilver mumbled as the door shut behind them. “I told you they were little.”

“We’re not,” James grumbled audibly; Erik smirked at Pietro without bothering to reply.

_“Let him **go** ,” she screams, and two of them go down the way the guys who grabbed them did before. Two’s not enough, not here. One of the ones Steph didn't get has a gun, and before she knows what’s going on he has it hard against her boy’s jaw. _

_“We don’t need him to be able to talk,” he tells her calmly. "_ _In fact, we only need his brain. Give me a reason, kid.”_

_James is so scared Steph thinks she’d be able to feel it even without this new, weird thing that makes everything worse, but he watches her with that smile in his eyes that’s always been just for her. He's going to let her decide, and live or not according to her choice._

_“I’ll do what you want,” Steph whispers, because there’s nothing else she can give._ _“Don’t hurt him. I won't be any trouble.”_

_They hurt him anyway, but the gun goes back in the drawer. It stays there, though, so she has to stay quiet like she said. James keeps his eyes on her for as long as he can, so Steph tries to smile and tell him calm, calm, calm. They let him up afterwards, so he's free to stumble forward and hang onto her as she cries._

_“I’m sorry,” she mutters, choking up anew when her hands find rough-shorn scalp instead of his silken, too-long hair. They want to find how his telepathy works, but Steph doesn’t really know what that means except that if they ever try to take his brain she’ll kill them all._

_“James, I’m sorry, I should’ve-“_

_“It’s okay,” he tells her, even though it’s not, and might never be again. His eyes are all wrong, cloudy and unfocused like he doesn’t know what he’s looking at, but his hands are the same, and when she presses close and clings he breathes her name like a prayer._

Erik woke with a start, his mother’s name on his lips for the first time in years.  He could already hear Pietro’s voice in the hallway, asking anxious questions in the quiet, slow-for-him voice which meant he must be talking to his younger sister. Who would be fine, of course, but  the impulse was understandable- Erik’s mother had been dead for years, and his heart was still racing with a real and present fear.

‘We’ve all had the nightmares’, the woman who had directed them to James and Stephanie had said. None of them had realised she had meant that literally. On the other hand, Erik had said to Raven the first time it had happened, it was probably for the best that they’d never have to ask their charges for details they weren’t prepared to share. Erik scowled when he walked in on Raven asking whether either of them wanted to talk about it, using the kind of low, soothing voice he associated with sick-rooms from the 1950s.

“Of course they don’t,” he snapped. Certainly they never had before, and no wonder. “They shouldn’t even have to think about it.”

This time had been worse than usual- the teenagers were tangled together like ivy, Stephanie still shuddering while James ignored everyone else to try and keep her calm.

“Sorry,” she muttered, her hands so tightly fisted in the boy’s shirt that Erik thought they’d have had to cut James out of his clothes to separate them.

“It’s not your fault,” Raven protested, but she might as well have saved her breath.

“I’m so sorry. James, I should have-”

“Hush,” he said quietly. “You did what you could, I know that. 'Course I know that, Steph.”

“Not enough,” she muttered. James frowned.

“If you’re gonna do that, isn’t it my fault we got done in the first place? Shoulda made you run, right, instead of-”

“There is nothing either of you should have done differently,” Erik interrupted, more urgent than he had intended.

“Possibly you could have escaped that first time, but they would have come for you again, most likely armed. If you had understood your powers you could have done more to fight them off; they would have knocked you out before they tried again, or kept you apart the next time.”

“You don’t have to scare them,” Raven murmured; she was sitting behind the teenagers, carding Stephanie’s hair with one hand while the other rested gently on James’ shoulder.

“They’re not scared,” Erik retorted. “If anything they’re realizing how strong they’ve already had to be.”

He leaned forward to look between them, deadly serious.

“It _cannot_ be your fault that every system which should have protected you failed. You did not deserve any of it- none of this was a punishment for anything you failed to do or do better. You could not have been faster, stronger or smarter- you did your best with what you were given, which was far worse than either of you were due. It was what it was, and _no part of it was your fault_. If you must ask each other what should have been done differently you may ask why no one ever took each individual person who hurt you and threw them off a cliff one by sorry one. Am I being clear enough?”

He had expected more dutiful nodding, possibly accompanied by another grateful half-smile. Instead, he found himself suddenly clasping two trembling teenagers to his chest as they threw themselves at him in a dizzying whirl of gratitude and affection.

“It’s all right,” he told them, wondering when his word had ever been enough for anyone. “It’s over now.”

 Pietro sighed loudly from the doorway.

“It’s okay. First-borns know we’re special even if the little ones get all the cuddles.”

“Special like the apocalypse,” Erik muttered, which won a grin from James and a reproachful mental nudge from Stephanie. Raven smiled when the empath yawned widely. “Bed, you two.”

She repeated Erik’s reassurances with enviable confidence before they left them for the night.

“I have to say,” she announced as they made their way down the corridor. “You’re much better with them than I expected.”

“He is right?” Pietro was beaming again. “I thought for sure you were going to be their favourite but they _love_ him.”

It must be his natural competitive streak, Erik decided, that had his cheeks heating with a pleased, triumphant kind of flush.

“Yes,” he muttered. “Well. They’ve been through a lot.”

Raven smiled too warmly by half.

“We don’t mind, you know. You can say you’re glad we found them.”

Erik decided he could afford to be honest.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been this glad.”

“You know why?”

Raven glared at Pietro.

“You better not be about to say that it was-”

“Because it was my idea!”

Erik sighed deeply.

“Well done, you've had one good idea in your life. Feel free to have another at some point. Do I need to tuck the first-born in, or can I bloody well go back to sleep?”

“Erik! Mind your language, there are children under this roof.”

“They’re _sixteen_ ,” Erik protested, knowing full well that it was futile. “They’ll probably be married by the time we’ve got that boy looking fully human again.”

He only realised the full significance of what he’d said when he wondered why Raven looked so startled, and how that throw-away comment had somehow been the line that left Pietro speechless for the first time since Erik had made his acquaintance. 


	3. Chapter 3

"It's her. Professor, I'm sure it's her."

Hank's quiet exclamation summed up Charles' own feelings- Jean really was a wonder. Erik must have learnt to safeguard his hideouts from telepathic contact, they had concluded as weeks of dedicated searching turned into months without turning up the faintest trace of Stephanie Rogers- hiding a class five mutant from Cerebro was no joke. Jean, however, had been sure more than once that she was close to making contact. She could see the girl, she insisted, even when Charles could barely make out more than indistinct shadows of a psychic presence. Since Jean showed potential like he'd never even dreamed of before making her acquaintance, Charles had given her free use of the machine any time she felt up to pursuing the issue. Finally, it seemed, her efforts had borne fruit.

"Are they still in New York?"

Jean nodded, leaning gratefully into Scott's embrace as soon as she was free of Cerebro's trappings. She dried her eyes with a still-shaking hand.

"She was so scared.”

Hank threw Charles a rueful look- perhaps, his tired eyes said, it had been too much to expect Erik to show any kind of temperance for more than a month or two.

"Come," Charles murmured, beckoning for Jean to lead the way. "Let's find out what we can do for Miss Rogers and her friend."

* * *

When they saw Miss Rogers and her friend in the flesh, however, the X-Men were forced to admit that all was not as they had expected. For one thing, the Brotherhood had neither separated nor confined the teenagers: Stephanie and James sat quite contentedly at a rusting picnic table in the public park under an old apartment block, perfectly at ease with all three members of the Brotherhood of Mutants surrounding them. Six months out of captivity had changed both teenagers almost beyond recognition- they were visibly healthier, and James in particular looked far less like a prisoner of war with a full head of thick, dark hair. He wasn't quite well- Charles recognized the too-familiar signs of a young man resigned to living with chronic pain, and the empath’s regular glances of concern were difficult to miss- but it was hard to deny that his condition was much improved since the X-Men had last seen him.

"Is he- I mean, he is, but- that is-"

Scott elbowed Beast, sharing a grin with Jean at the rare sight of their teammate unable to find the words he wanted.

"What is it, Hank?"

Hank's voice was hushed, even wondering.

"I think Erik’s teaching him chess."

He couldn’t be, Charles was ready to protest even as Erik watched the boy set up the board for play. Erik at chess was not unlike Magneto in battle- he was as arrogant as he was brilliant, as impatient as he was efficient, and no more gracious in victory than in defeat. The idea of his taking on a student who had never even played before they met wasn't just unlikely- it was inconceivable. And yet there they were, Erik leaning intently over the board as James made his first move. Raven and Pietro seemed to be entertaining each other; Stephanie, still pressed into her young man’s side, was reading a paperback except when she checked on their progress. She glanced up curiously when Erik tapped the boy’s wrist as James reached for his knight.

"Are you sure that’s what you want to do?"

James glared quite fiercely considering it was at Magneto.

"You said you weren't going to help anymore."

Stephanie nodded sagely.

“You did, I was there.”

"I’m so sorry,” Erik drawled, waving his hand at the board with exaggerated deference. “Please continue, by all means."

James set the piece down with a flourish; Stephanie grinned and returned to her novel as Erik made his own move.

“It’s strictly self-interest anyway. With these people for company you’re my only hope of cultivating an opponent worth playing."

"That means he’s happy you want to play his boring game with him," the empath translated cheerfully. Hank’s mouth was hanging open by the time Erik had reached across the table to tug the girl’s braid in wholly affectionate rebuke. Scott turned to Charles and Jean.

“Am I completely off-base here, or does it look like they’re, you know, perfectly fine with these guys?”

“It’s like ‘Happy Families,’” Jean whispered; Hank glowered at her choice of words. Clearly, Charles thought wryly, he hadn’t been the only one to notice the way Erik’s free hand kept finding the small of Raven’s back, or that she hadn’t smacked him away once.

“You’re the one who said they were in trouble,” Hank reminded Jean stiffly; Charles decided it was high time to find out either way. He spoke directly to the young telepath, letting the smile on his face come across in his mental voice.

_"I’d keep an eye on that bishop if I were you. If I know Erik, he'll most likely-"_

"What’s wrong? Is it starting again?”

The boy had turned away from the board, blinking quickly as though the soft evening light had become drastically brighter without warning. Stephanie put her book aside so she could lift a hand to his face, guiding him back to look her way.

“Tell me.”

"I hate this," he muttered, deeply frustrated. “Steph, I-”

"Hey," Quicksilver said softly, looping one arm around the girl’s tense shoulders just as her rising dread began to make Charles nauseous. "Calm down little Vulcan. Cap’n Jim’s gonna be okay."

Hank muttered under his breath that Vulcans were emphatically not empaths, but Stephanie had more immediate concerns.

"They always say that," she hissed, pulling away roughly. "Always _say_ that, but then-"

Jean gasped and reached out one hand as if trying to protect the girl; in front of them, Erik lurched to his feet. Charles caught a flash of vivid white coats and a cruel smile before James turned blindly towards the empath.

"Steph, honey, we gotta get your shields-"

She gasped, eyes going wide as she put herself between Magneto and the boy. Stephanie grabbed Erik’s arm with both hands, her voice a frightened whimper.

"I’m sorry! I’ll be quiet. Don’t hurt him, I’m sorry- I’ll be quiet."

That, unfortunately, was much closer to what the X-Men had anticipated when they'd come out here. Charles wheeled himself forward, determined to stop Erik before he made things worse, while Jean asked Stephanie the question preying on all their minds.   

_"Do they punish him if you lose control?"_

Quicksilver’s reflexes alone saved James from a nasty encounter with Erik’s chess set. Raven cried out in alarm as the boy went limp in Pietro’s arms, but before anyone could respond the edges of their reality blurred into nightmare.

_Stephanie sobs wretchedly as they lead James away. The last time she tried to stop them they brought him back so badly broken she wasn’t sure she’d ever put him back together. The next time, they’ve told her- and she knows they mean it- next time she tries anything, they’re not going to bring him back at all._

_“I’ll be good,” she whispers; the guard nods significantly. She waits, too far to help him but close enough to feel every awful invasion, and hates how weak she is, how useless to the boy who’s only ever tried to keep her safe. When they bring him back he’s so still she almost thinks she hasn’t been good enough after all- except she can still feel him hanging on, like he always will if he can, just for her._

_“I’m sorry."_

_Mostly she's hoping he'll object- James hates it when she apologises. Even when he’s real sick he growls and fusses until she finds another way to say she’d give everything she’s ever had to see him safe again. This time, he can’t even keep his eyes open long enough to glare._

_“James, I’m sorry.”_

Erik was still frozen where he stood, visibly shaking with emotion. Behind Charles, Jean was sobbing helplessly into Scott’s shoulder as he tried to soothe her in a voice not much less distressed than hers. If they let this go on, Charles knew, it would occur to someone to call the police, or the fire department, or both. With no other alternative in sight, he shut the empath down. As her all-consuming terror receded, shut off behind the mental barriers Charles had had no choice but to fling up, the others came to themselves around him. Quicksilver was the first to recognize the X-Men’s intervention; unfortunately, since he was still holding onto James, it was Erik who followed his narrowed eyes and turned on Charles and his team with the self-righteous fire he wore so well.

“What did you do?”

Charles tried to move towards him, only to find himself immobilized by metal stakes that had been driven through the axels of his chair’s wheels before he’d realized that Erik knew he was there. When Hank and Scott stepped forward protectively, Erik threw the whole table between them and his team without the least regard for whether anyone seeing a man chucking metal furniture around like it was made of paper while the entire block suffered from psychic shock might put two and two together.

“ _Don’t_ come any nearer.”

His warning was for everyone, but that vicious anger, as it so often seemed to be, was reserved for Charles. “If you’ve hurt them-”

“Erik. Not now.”

He whirled on Raven with a frustrated snarl, but Charles _felt_ Magneto’s priorities shift as he realized that James, already struggling in Pietro’s grip, was coming to. He turned without so much as glancing back at the X-Men, striding up to Pietro and lifting the boy easily into his own arms.

“Try to stay calm,” he urged the young man with all the patience it would never have occurred to him to show their students in the old days. “You’re perfectly safe, James.”

The boy shook his head, rocking both of them with the force of his grief.

“She didn’t mean to,” he whispered. “It wasn’t her fault they scared her like that. Why’d he-”

As the X-Men looked on, paralysed to a man by the sight, James turned his face into his protector’s shirt with a heartbroken sob.

“It wasn’t her fault,” he whispered again.

“No one blames her,” Erik promised softly. “She’ll be all right as soon as Charles lets her up.”

The boy lifted his head at last, looking to Erik with a fragile kind of hope.

“Y’mean she’s not-”

Erik’s face changed as he understood.

“Of course not.”

He all but snapped the words, but there was only compassion in his voice. Erik shifted so the boy could sit up, still leaning against him, and smiled when James gasped in relief at the sight of Raven cradling the unconscious empath. When he reached out tentatively, they helped him gather the girl carefully into his arms.

“That’s better,” Raven murmured. Erik nodded seriously, steadying the boy as James pressed his forehead to Stephanie’s with frightened devotion.  

“Still can’t _see_ her,” he muttered. “She’s just gone. I really thought-”

“Charles there found a way to disrupt your mental connection when he tried to talk to you, that’s all.”

The boy twisted to regard Magneto with open amazement.

“Is _that_ what he was doing?”

“I think it must have been.”

James nodded, taking Erik’s word for it. One loving hand caressed the girl’s pale cheek.

“She was so scared.”

“She thought you were being attacked.”

“Weren’t we?”

It was a mark of how much things had changed since Charles had last engaged with Erik that such a golden opportunity to badmouth the X-Men and their mission passed him by completely unexploited.

“I’m almost sure he was trying to help you.”

The boy glowered.

“Can you make him ‘let her up’ now? If they’re not our shields it’s just locking her in.”

Erik raised his head and met Charles’s startled eyes with cool challenge.

“Charles?”

Hank started forward nervously.

“Wouldn’t you rather take this somewhere more private first? She was in some distress.”

She’d come to screaming, Charles thought he meant, and drown them all in another wave of despair.

“I would _rather_ you’d all left them well alone to begin with,” Erik spat. “Right now I think you’d better do as James asks.”

Mystique and Quicksilver were already on their feet, ready for anything. It would only make things worse if they came to blows over an empath’s emotions, Charles thought, and let his psychic barriers drop. His vision blurred with tears almost immediately, but the solid wall of Stephanie’s devastation had no time to choke the area before James threw his arms around her and spoke, quick and fervent, right into her ear.

“Don’t, it’s okay. It’s not for real. I’m here, Steph, we’re okay.”

Her arms came up around his shoulders; one hand slid further up to tangle in his hair. Charles smiled faintly as the last of Stephanie’s panic drained away in the face of physical proof that they were months away from that awful place.

“You were gone,” she whispered. “Completely gone, like-”

She dropped her head onto the boy’s shoulder, shuddering too violently to finish the thought. James ran his hand over her hair and down her back. 

“I thought that too. Erik says Xavier knocked us out outta whack tryin’a talk to us.”

_“Xavier?”_

Her offended incredulity rocked everyone except the boy, who pressed a quick, laughing kiss to her temple.

“I know.”

He shrugged self-deprecatingly. “Turns out I'm not that great with telepaths.”

“Their fault,” Stephanie decided after a moment. “You're real good with empaths, aren’t you?”

“Just my one, maybe.”

“Maybe,” she murmured, and then closed the gap between them. It was impossible to say how it was different from any other kiss, and yet there was certainly more going on than the chaste press of her lips to his suggested.

“They’re not actually siblings,” Pietro remarked conversationally. Scott, apparently mesmerized by the empathic kiss taking place in front of him, nodded absently.

"We've seen the files.”

Jean's eyes widened a fraction of a second before Scott's head snapped up.

"That is, I mean-"

“You mean you’ve been looking for them for a while,” Raven realized, cold as fear itself.  _"You’re_ the reason he’s been so sick."

Jean took a faltering step forwards, one hand raised to her lips in a typical gesture of dismay.

“You’re wrong,” she protested, understandably disturbed by the idea that she’d been the cause of everything the X-Men had arrived to prevent. “Every time I found her she was already in-”

“Of course she was,” Pietro cried impatiently. “You can only see her when she’s not hanging onto her Jim and the only time she isn’t hanging onto him is when they can’t keep it together ‘cos they’re already upset and _of course_ they get upset when you’re givin’ him seizures trying to find her!”

It made a kind of sense, Charles had to admit.

“They did seem quite well when we got here.”

"They were," Erik retorted so fiercely that Scott edged in front of Jean in case he'd have to defend her. Erik raised one bored, condemning eyebrow before turning his back on them entirely to resume glaring at Charles.

"He’d have been well these last three months and more if you hadn’t been trying your damnedest to break into his head."

Stephanie reached past her devoted suitor to grab Erik’s wrist. Her smile was sweet, but also knowing.

“He’s okay, you know. Really, not like they used to say.”

Erik Lehnsherr, who had never once gone a whole conversation without snapping at Charles for relying on his telepathy to gauge his reactions from time to time, nodded crisply.

"Thank God for that."

James twisted to meet his eyes. When he smiled, shy but pleased, Erik’s deadpan expression softened into a real, fond, smile.

“Oh,” Hank breathed. “This I did _not_ see coming.”

Two pairs of silver-grey eyes turned towards him, matching dark brows already arched sardonically. Charles’ breath caught as the rest of the X-Men saw what Hank had already recognised.

“Erik,” he murmured before he was fully aware of what he was saying. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me?”


	4. Chapter 4

“This could change everything,” Hank gasped, breaking the silence that had fallen. “If he’s- and you’re- then that means-”

“McCoy,” Erik heard himself growl before he was conscious of having anything to say. He put one hand on James’s shoulder and the other on Stephanie’s, steadying both of them before their growing anxiety overwhelmed the group again. “Shut your mouth before one of us does it for you.”

He felt the warmth of Stephanie’s affectionate gratitude before she pulled away to put both arms around James’s neck. He calmed immediately, relaxing under her hands as she pressed closer without a word.

“Magnificent,” Charles breathed, looking on with eager curiosity. “I haven’t seen raw power on this scale since you and I first met.”

Xavier’s younger recruits looked faintly shocked at that, but Mystique was already rolling her eyes like the teenager Erik sometimes forgot she had been when they’d been introduced.

“Look at him,” she drawled, utterly scornful. “In two seconds he’s going to tell you they’ll be far better off with him.”

To his credit, perhaps, Charles didn’t waste anyone’s time trying to deny it.

“There’s so much I could teach her,” he insisted, then his faraway expression grew sharp as his eyes snapped to Erik’s. “Both of them, I’m sure. Once they learn to manage their codependence other telepaths will be able to communicate with them without compromising their connection, and-”

“I’m not a telepath, though.”

Erik felt his shoulders tense in sympathy at the strain in James’s voice. Charles looked surprised, glancing speculatively between Erik and Raven before returning his attention to the teenager.

“I think you must be,” he began gently, but James was adamant.  

“I’m not. They checked. A lot.”

His voice trembled. “I’m  _not_ a telepath, I’m just-“

“James. That’s enough.”

Everyone present turned to look at Erik, who ignored all of them except the two teenagers in his charge. The boy’s expression was teetering between sullen confidence and a fragility Erik didn’t like to think about. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation, is that clear?”

There was another brief silence, then James nodded.  His eyes were still downcast, but he smiled at Stephanie when she tucked herself close again.

“Yessir.”

“Good boy.”

Erik included the empath in his answering nod. “Will you two be all right on your own until we’re done here?”

They agreed in tandem, but Erik couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. 

“Keep an eye on him, will you?”

Stephanie nodded solemnly, but her eyes were on the female telepath on Charles’s team.

“Don’t be too mad, okay? They thought they were helping.”

Erik squeezed her hand tight before letting go.  

“We’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

The empath smiled, pure and trusting, before turning to tug her charge towards the apartment block. Erik frowned at the unmistakable stiffness in James’s stance, but he had hardly had time to notice it when Hank McCoy shattered his concentration again.

“You’re not asking us to believe that  _Erik Lehnsherr’s_ son is human.”

Hank often spoke too loudly in his enthusiasm- watching the teenagers retreat, Erik could hardly avoid noticing how James stilled before Stephanie enveloped him in another desperate embrace.

“No one’s asking you to do anything,” Pietro snapped, shifting from foot to foot in his agitation. “Except go back where you came from and leave these poor kids alone. What difference can it make to you what he is apart from safe and free and perfectly happy except when you guys get in the way?”

Once in a while, Erik reflected, Pietro did find a way to hit the nail right on the head in far less time than it would have taken anyone else.

“Well said,” he murmured, tearing his eyes away from James and Stephanie so he could glare at Charles again. “Was there anything else?”

“Erik,” Charles persisted. His voice was rich with that mixture of entreating sincerity and moral superiority that always set Erik’s teeth on edge. “I’m not sure that you-”

Raven laughed in his face.

“We understand perfectly well, Charles.”

Her eyes burned with the defiant fire Erik had often thought was her best look. “Your last rescue is all grown up and using Cerebro on her own- of course you need another class 5 charity case to keep you busy. Isn’t that how this works?”

Charles looked stricken. The other telepath drew in a sharp breath of protest, but it was her boyfriend who pushed forward to defend her, fluffed up like a popinjay prepared to defend the nest.

“That’s not what this is about at all,” he insisted in a self-righteous whine that made Erik intensely grateful that  _his_ teenagers strongly favoured non-verbal communication. “The professor would  _never-_ ”

“Maybe you should ask him how we met.”

The boy turned pleading eyes on Charles, but Raven spoke before either of them had a chance.

“We did offer, believe it or not. Erik’s first choice was to take them both straight to you.”

It wasn’t the first time they’d seen Xavier and his team rendered speechless, but Erik found himself relishing the moment anyway. Predictably, Beast was the first to recover.

“Why didn’t you?”

Erik shrugged like it had been a much more casual decision than it had.

“They didn’t want to go.”

He felt his lips turn up at the memory. “They weren’t convinced they had much in common with the likes of you.”

Charles was frowning his most pedagogical frown.

“Was it really appropriate to leave it up to them? After everything they’d gone through-”

“After  _everything they’d gone through_  who else had any right to make that choice for them?”

Again, Erik found himself speaking before he was conscious of having anything to say. He unclenched his fists with an effort, but went on in the same deadly tone. “They spent  _years_ in that cage. Of course it had to be their choice.” 

“Erik, you really must-”

He trailed off, thoroughly taken aback, when Raven sidled up to Erik and took his hand in hers as if she did it all the time.

“Not this time, Charles. They’re perfectly safe, all right? They need rescuing from Erik about as much as I do.”

“Sometimes less,” Quicksilver offered with a grin, bright and affectionate but sharp where it counted. “Those two know how to look after each other.”

All three of them were braced for a fight, or at least a lengthy argument, but after a moment Charles surprised them by nodding like he understood.

“You’ll let us know if there’s anything we can do in future?”

“Professor,” Hank protested, still glowering at Raven’s hand entwined with Erik’s. “Are you-”

“Quite sure, Hank, yes. I think we’re done here.”

Erik found himself smiling like he meant it.

“Thank you.”

He made an effort not to react to their astonishment, or to the self-satisfied twinkle in Xavier’s eyes.

“Of course, old friend. Hank, Jean, Scott- with me, please.”

His students followed in baffled obedience.

“Well,” Pietro muttered once they were well out of earshot. “That was strange even for us. D’you think it can be that easy? He’ll just get better now they know not to try’n help him?”  

“Let’s hope so,” Raven answered fervently. She squeezed Erik’s hand when he failed to react. “Are  _you_ all right?”

He was, Erik thought- until they reached the apartment to find James sitting stiffly on the living room sofa, alone.  

“Hey,” Quicksilver murmured, zipping over to ruffle his hair. “Where’s your Vulcan got to?”

“Here,” Stephanie offered for herself, smiling at Pietro from the door to the room she shared with James. “Can you’n Raven come in for a minute, y’think?”

It wasn’t what Erik would have called subtle. Raven shot him a concerned look, but he waved her off with mostly false confidence. Once she and Pietro had disappeared into the adjacent room, shutting the door firmly behind them, he moved to sit next to James, quashing the urge to look him over in case Charles and the girl had done more damage than they had realized.  

“What is it, then?”

For a moment, he wasn’t sure James would answer; when he did, his voice was barely a whisper.

“You didn’t have to send us away. You could’ve just told him I’m not- I mean- you know.”

Erik frowned.

“I’ve said this already. It’s no business of Charles Xavier’s whether you’re-“

“Not  _that_!”

James took a breath, then corrected himself. “Not just that, I mean. They still think I’m your kid.”

Erik raised an eyebrow, reflexively reaching for derision to mask the pang of hurt that came with the edge in the boy’s voice that sounded too much like rejection.

“And that’s offensive to you, is it?”

He watched James’s forehead crease in confusion and realised that that hadn’t been the problem at all. His heart lurched at a possibility he thought he should have considered much earlier.

“Did you think I was using you to keep her here?”

It was what Trask would have done, after all- what had been done, the whole time that god-forsaken lab had held each of them hostage to the other’s compliance. It would have been effective, as well- Charles and his team had backed off in part because they would no more have separated the boy from his father than take Stephanie away from her only source of support. James shook his head dismissively.

“’Course not.”

“Right,” Erik muttered, awkward in his overwhelming relief. “Good.”

They sat like that for a moment, the silence less tense but still heavy with some unspoken expectation, then James took another steadying breath and proved again that he was made of stronger stuff than Erik had ever imagined was possible in a boy of his age.

“I’m not, though. Am I?”

The poorly disguised longing in his voice was too much- Erik heard the ceiling fan coming apart before he realized he was reacting like a child. A flick of his wrist restored the living room fixtures, but by the time he could even think of answering he found James watching him with the unnatural calm that meant he’d locked his true response away behind the façade that only Stephanie would be allowed to breach.

“Yeah,” he murmured, painfully matter-of-fact. “That’s what we thought too. Sorry.”

Erik grabbed the boy by his shoulders, more roughly than he had intended.

“What can you think you have to apologise for?”

James shrugged in his grasp, sighing like he found the whole situation exhausting.

“’s like he said, isn’t it- your kid’s gotta be _one of you_ , right?”

“My mother wasn’t,” Erik countered abruptly, caught without a script yet again. James froze.

“Wasn’t she?”

He wasn’t to know, of course- Erik wasn’t sure he’d even mentioned her out loud to anyone since Charles.

“No,” he said quietly. “She wasn’t, and she was far and away the strongest person I’d ever known until we met.”

This time he saw everything James was feeling in the boy’s startled eyes.

“I’ve never been ashamed of her,” Erik told him deliberately. He hesitated, just for a moment, then steeled himself to say what he meant. “And I’m sure I’ll never be ashamed of you, either.”

It seemed woefully inadequate, somehow, as an expression of everything Erik had never realized he should have said by now.

“I meant what I said,” he offered more tentatively than he would have liked. “It’s more than blood between us, young man, and if Hank McCoy has something to say about it he can answer to your fiancée and her brick.”

He wasn’t entirely prepared for James to collapse against him with an overwrought kind of sob, but apparently he’d been easing into fatherhood just about long enough not to panic completely. Gradually, Erik relaxed his vise-grip on the boy’s shoulders enough to turn their awkward grappling pose into a real hug.  

“You’re all right,” he murmured, and felt his own eyes go wide as the penny dropped. “Alles wird gut, Schatz.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently some people want to see the rest of this???  
> I'm not totally convinced that 'alles wird gut' is something anyone would actually say out loud but since it's in the film I just tell myself that Erik's mother liked it for whatever reason so in this one he just remembers it her way regardless of whether it's actually correct, okay?


	5. Chapter 5

“What?”

Pietro leaned about as far over the balcony rail as it was possible for someone with an intact backbone to bend. “That’s not good.”

He was gone before Erik could demand an explanation.

“Give him a minute,” Mystique advised without looking up from the file she had been studying. That was usually good advice where Quicksilver was concerned, so Erik stayed where he was too- until, only a few minutes later, they recognized the quiet murmur of Stephanie’s voice on the stairs. Erik glanced reflexively at the clock over the stove, just in case, but he already knew it was barely mid-morning. Both he and Mystique were on their feet by the time their front door opened to reveal not only Pietro but both of the teenagers who should have been at school. They spoke at the same time, Erik’s sharper tone all but drowning out Mystique’s concerned murmur.

“You’re back early.”    

“Did something happen at that school?”

The teenagers, visibly shaken by whatever it was but not actually in pain as far as Erik could tell, nodded in unison. Stephanie was clinging to her anchor with all her might, both arms looped around one of James’s to keep him captive at her side. Pietro, looking as grave as he ever did, nudged the boy gently by way of nominating him to answer.

“There were, I dunno. Army guys, we thought? At school, asking about us.” 

Raven closed her eyes for a moment, then turned suddenly and kissed Erik’s cheek before he had any idea that a thought like that had ever crossed her mind.

“Thank god you’re so bloody paranoid,” she muttered, meaning that it would have been much harder for James and Stephanie to get away if Erik hadn’t insisted that if they really had to mix with strangers at all they’d better make sure it was under names that could never be traced back to that god-forsaken facility.

“I did tell you it was a useful precaution. Did they see you?” 

Stephanie shook her head, leaning into James a little more.

“We got out of there real quick once we heard.”

“Good,” Pietro murmured emphatically, still hovering behind them. Erik nodded; Mystique moved to face the other two.

“It’s just me,” she said softly, then let her features shift. “Stop me if any of these are familiar, all right?”

She waited for the teenagers to agree, tentative but also curious, before she let her features change once, twice, and then three more times.

“Brilliant,” Erik murmured as he realized what she was doing- Mystique shot him a grin still wearing Trask’s wife’s vicious smile. James and Stephanie shook their heads obediently as she took them through a veritable rogues’ gallery of Trask’s known associates. Pietro had just about breathed a sigh of relief at the series of fiends they’d ruled out when James straightened perceptibly.

“Wait, wait. That guy. No, the one before. Yeah.”

Stephanie let go of James to grab Mystique’s arm.

“Why’s that bad? Who was it?”

“William Stryker,” Erik told her when it became clear that Mystique wasn’t quite up to answering for herself. “We know his work, you could say.”

He chose not to mention the hundreds of case files he had watched Mystique burn to ash with tears in her eyes and her jaw clenched tightly enough to make Erik’s ache vicariously, but from Stephanie’s troubled sigh he thought it came across regardless.

“Never mind that now,” Mystique decided abruptly, but kissed Stephanie’s forehead before stepping away with purpose. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

In spite of the tension choking the room, Erik found himself smirking at the wide-eyed look that passed between his charges. When James raised an eyebrow instead of asking his question out loud, Erik was startled to realise that even he could see how Hank had jumped to the conclusion that they were related.

“What,” he drawled. “Did you think I’d let these two snatch you both from that bloody place  _without_ making a plan for when those bastards caught up with us?”

“At first it was a plan to escape the X-Men,” Pietro clarified because he had never heard of discretion- or because he’d seen the signs of strain on James’s face that meant both teenagers were beginning to feel the stress of keeping Stephanie’s mental shields intact. “But then that crazy psychic got all emo because he thinks Erik’s the only guy in America with grey eyes so now it’s our anti-Stryker plan. Counter-Stryke plan.”

“Pietro,” Mystique groaned, but the warning had very little force to it. James smiled faintly as Stephanie’s iron grip on his arm relaxed minutely. “Stop wasting time.”

Quicksilver rolled his eyes, demanding without words how Mystique had forgotten who she was talking to. He squeezed James’s shoulder, kissed Steph’s cheek, and disappeared in a blur. Bare seconds later he was back with a bag that seemed too big by half to have only the essentials in it.

“What’re you all standing around for?”

They made it to the car without incident, but were barely five blocks away when the hiss and heavy clanking of metallic feet announced the encroaching roadblock.

“Steph,” James whispered, already tugging her closer as if he could shield her bodily from the sentinels.

“’m okay,” she muttered, but made no move to escape his embrace.

“Get them out of here,” Pietro ordered suddenly. “I’ll make sure these jerks are looking the other way.”

“No!”

Both Stephanie and James made a grab for Pietro, but of course he was already gone. Mystique grabbed Erik’s wrist.

“Go,” he agreed before she had to ask; she paused just long enough to wink at the teenagers before throwing herself out of the car after their other boy.

“Erik-”

"I know," he assured Stephanie. “Trust me, all right?”

She hardly had to tell him that they already did, but both kids looked confused when Erik stopped the car with a screech and got out to hail a cab.

“What are we-“

“Straight to Westchester,” he ordered as one pulled over, the driver apparently blissfully unaware of the chaos unfolding only a few blocks away. “Charles will keep an eye on you until we can catch up.”

“What?”

James grabbed his arm, appalled. “No! They’ll-“

He shuddered bodily, too familiar with all the ways Trask’s colleagues tended to get the information they were looking for. Erik caught the boy by his shoulders.

“That’s why I can’t leave those two on their own with them.”

When Stephanie reached out to grab one of his hands, Erik opened his arms to pull both teenagers into a quick, bracing hug.

“I’ll bring them home. Be safe, both of you.”

In almost a year he’d never seen the need to say it out loud- Stephanie knew all their feelings without being told, of course, and Erik wasn’t sure she’d ever had a thought she didn’t instantly share with her James, but in that moment he thought it just wasn’t enough to tell himself they _had_ to know. “I love you.”

Stephanie let her affection overwhelm him as James nodded, sober as a judge.

“You too, okay?”

Erik shoved a handful of bills at the bewildered taxi driver.

“ _Don’t_ let them talk you into bringing them back.”

He slammed the door as soon as they were safely in the cab, and watched much less coolly than he would have liked as they were set adrift.

“Mutation detected,” a toneless voice announced overhead. Erik rolled his eyes.

“And how.”

He had the satisfaction of rending a good number of them to bits before he was overwhelmed.

Stephanie was shaking violently by the time they left the reached the corner.

“Hey,” their driver muttered, well past spooked; James caught his eye in the mirror as he tugged Stephanie almost all the way into his lap.

“Sorry,” he muttered as she nuzzled helplessly into his neck. “Sorry, we’re just- she’s just tired.”

She was alarmingly close to collapse, but smiled against his neck as he stroked her hair. The driver was still frowning.

“And that guy wasn’t-“

“No.”

That was Steph herself, loud and clear. “No, he’d never. He’s been lookin’ after us this whole time.”

The driver looked nervous and relieved at the same time, but James had very little time to do anything but nod before Steph pressed her face into the crook of his neck, overwhelming him with love and dread in equal measure.

“Thanks,” he managed, then ignored the guy entirely in favour of concentrating on the happiest memories he had- thanks in large part to the three people they were missing desperately already- to try and guide Steph back towards lighter emotions. It didn’t work, exactly, but it kept her calm long enough to spare the driver. By the time James stumbled from the cab, weighed down not only by an armful of exhausted empath but also by the bag Erik had chucked in after them, Xavier’s students were waiting for them at the gate.

“Alex,” Stephanie murmured, smiling at the only one they hadn't met before. Any more than that would have been too many words for her just then, though, so James answered for her when Havok and his friends exclaimed their surprise.

“Raven showed us once, when she was telling us about your team, before."

It was getting harder to stay on his feet while also keeping Steph upright and mostly calm, but James flinched away when Cyclops tried to steady him. 

"I'm okay," he managed with an effort. “Please- they’re on their own out there.”

Alex Summers had been in the army, he thought he remembered Mystique saying once. “Stryker’s got those robot things from that time with the stadium.”

Both brothers nodded gravely- it was already on the news, they said. 

"The professor's on his way," Jean reported, opening her eyes suddenly. "Thank goodness you both got away." 

She smiled, so earnest that it made Steph smile a little too.

"We'll find them, okay? You two rest up in the meantime."

It was on the tip of James’s tongue to protest that they had to go too, but with Steph already trembling with the effort of keeping it together he couldn't exactly demand that they be allowed to fling themselves into the fight alongside the X-Men. 

“Just hurry,” he muttered insistently. “Please.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it lives! I may finish this yet : D

“Erik Lehnsherr.” 

Times changed, Erik had been trying to tell Charles since their first meeting; people rarely did. It had been at least three decades since Schmidt had set that god-forsaken coin down between them, and yet if only Stryker had been speaking German it may as well have been the same room apart from a large screen set up to one side. “This is an unexpected pleasure- your friends were sure you’d be long gone by now.”

Erik blinked rapidly, trying to hide his disorientation, and suppressed a scowl as he determined that the cuffs securing him to the examination table were plastic.

“If you have a question you’d better ask it- we’re not all telepaths, you know.”

The blow that followed was violent but not especially precise- somehow, Erik realized with grim satisfaction, he had hit a nerve already.  

“Tell me about the chimera,” Stryker demanded, his voice thick with loathing. Erik blinked sluggishly, and not because of his already-blurred vision.

“The what?”

Stryker’s gaze bore into his like the colonel was trying to carve his way in. Not for the first time, Erik missed the security afforded by his helmet. He set his jaw and aimed for as sullen and abrasive a tone as Pietro would have used. As Pietro might already have used, if Stryker’s taunts had any basis in fact. “No, really- I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about outside of Greek mythology.”

Stryker’s fist slammed into the board that was holding Erik up, close enough to jar his teeth.

“The boy, Magneto. Your _human_ son.”

His surprise must have shown on his face- the colonel smirked outright. “I suppose you’d like to know how I know that.”

He pressed a button on the control panel to their left. One of the walls seemed to melt away, turning transparent so that Erik was suddenly face to face not only with Raven and Pietro- bruised and uneasy but together- but with as wretched a collection of X-Men as he had ever seen.

 _Erik_ , he felt Charles murmur in his mind, bracing and strengthening. It felt like there was a layer of ice forming around his heart, squeezing his chest until Erik had to fight for breath. He shut his eyes against a blind rage so powerful it would have brought the building down if only Stryker had not thought to choose a place with stone foundations.

 _You left them,_ he knew Charles would hear without his having to say anything out loud. _I trusted you, and you left them alone._

“That’s right,” Stryker purred, entirely misreading both Erik’s fury and Xavier’s stricken look. “Maybe you’ll rethink your answers now. How can he register as human?”

He was nowhere near as intimidating as Schmidt had ever been- and Erik was hardly a frightened teenager anymore, nor were any of the colonel’s hostages a defenseless, half-starved woman focused only on her beloved child. Erik raised an eyebrow.

“Because he is, I assume.”

The colonel stared at him, outraged by what he took to be incredible mendacity.

“You still expect me to believe that?”

Erik smirked, raising his eyes to meet Charles’s coolly through the glass that separated them.

“I’m almost sure we’ve had this conversation before.”

Another violent blow made it clear how much Stryker appreciated being compared to one of the most powerful mutants alive. 

“I want an answer.”

The screen to their left came to life with a muffled sob Erik already knew too well. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Raven stiffen too.

“Please,” James was saying urgently, gaunt and withdrawn like when they’d pulled him from that cell but much younger than he had been when Erik had first clapped eyes on him. “She’s just scared. Don’t hurt her, I can- I can-“

He drew a ragged breath, eyes fixed on the girl in the isolation cell.

“I can keep her quiet, if you let me in there.”

It was Trask himself who gave the order, his voice tinny but distinct on the old tape. There was no other way, Erik thought he must have realized- they _couldn’t_ keep her sedated all the time given the tests he planned to run, but evidently they had no idea what to do with an empath of any kind, let alone one as powerful as Stephanie Rogers. The guards were in tears by the time they got the door open, one of them on his knees even as the other slammed it shut- but only a few moments later the teenagers were locked together, clinging to each other in that life-or-death embrace Erik wasn’t sure even they understood completely.

“Fine,” he heard Trask growl as the guards stuggled to collect themselves. “Together, then. I want to know how it’s done.”

The image froze there, shivering and jumping in such a way as to complete the movement James had started towards stroking Stephanie’s hair. Erik turned away to escape the image of their captivity. Stryker stared him down, unsmiling.

“I want to know how it’s done too.”

His tone was different from Trask’s, though- Erik knew more intimately than any living mutant except _possibly_ the two Charles was failing completely to protect what scientific curiosity looked like on the face of a demented scientist. This desperation was something else entirely.

“Why? Who do you need to contain?”

Charles sat up a little straighter in the facing cell.    

“Jason,” he murmured, barely audible with all the glass between them- but Stryker turned on him too quickly for Erik to think Xavier had been mistaken. “This is about your son.”

There was a single beat of silence- then the colonel’s fist met the screen wall separating them from the others with an almighty crash.

“Very clever,” Stryker hissed. “Though it’s hardly detective work coming from a _telepath._ ”

“ _Your_ son,” Erik repeated, feeling out the links he’d missed. “Your son is one of us.”

It was entirely the wrong thing to say. He saw the blow coming, but there was nowhere to go- for a long moment he was conscious only of the pain, and of Raven saying his name over and over again.

“Enough,” Stryker decided abruptly. “I had hoped you would cooperate, but if you’re not going to play along I’m perfectly willing to find out for myself.”

He smiled coldly.

“The sentinels will find them in very little time. Westchester, I believe it is?”

“They’re not there,” Charles announced suddenly, his voice as calm as ever. “Did you really think I would endanger my students by leaving them on-site?”

Stryker looked furious for a moment- but then he seemed to shrug, mostly to himself.

“Details. I _was_ hoping I’d get to try this.”

A door swung on the other side of the glass to reveal a child in the grip of two burly military men. The boy’s head lolled, his eyes glassy and distant. It was a dampening collar of some kind, Erik realized with revulsion- somehow Stryker- or Trask, or both working together- had devised a way to keep the boy’s telepathy in check until his father had use for it. Charles’s horror was plain on his face.

“You’re- he’s- this is despicable.”

Stryker was unmoved.

“I wonder if you’d say that if you knew what he’s already done. Jason.”

Suddenly, the boy was staring right at them. Erik found that the effect was no less unsettling. “Would you like to play a game with Daddy?”

The boy nodded eagerly, offering his father a heartbreakingly earnest smile. Stryker nodded coolly.

“The nice telepath in that room with you is hiding some friends from us. Could you find them for me, please?”

The boy frowned.

“Then you’ll play with me, like you said?”

“If you behave,” the colonel conceded. His son smiled.

“Will they play with me too? The new friends, when I find them?”

Stryker’s smile went through Erik like another vicious blow.

“I’m hoping they will, yes. Release him.” 

They did it in stages, first literally letting go of the child and then- once the doors had been secured- powering down the device that had been controlling the boy. Erik saw it happen- Jason’s eyes cleared first, then his spine straightened as he seemed to come back to himself.

“Jason,” Charles began, soft and entreating as he often was in the face of tortured mutants more powerful than they were in control. “Listen to me, please.”

The boy offered him the same sweet smile he had given his father.

“No. I’m going to find my friends like Daddy said.”

It was all the warning they got before Xavier screamed.

* * *

 “Hey,” Hank ventured cautiously, peering into the bedroom where Jean and Alex had settled _Magneto’s son_ and his apparent fiancée. “How’re we doing?”

Better, it looked like- they’d had a chance to rest, at least, with the effect that neither one looked as close to keeling over as they had when they’d arrived. They were sitting side by side, pressed together from knee to thigh with their hands still intertwined.

“They called you Vulcan,” Hank remembered. Stephanie glanced towards James, who raised her hand to his lips with a grin.

“You can do it. I’m right here.”

She frowned at him, rocking them gently with her reproach, but found the words herself.

“Pietro does. ‘s from Star Trek, ‘cos we- James?”

He had gone rigid next to her, fingers clenching over hers as Jean hurried forward.

“What’s-”

“No!”

Stephanie scrambled to her knees, hands flying to frame her partner’s face. “James, no-“

She wrapped herself around him instead of pulling back as he went limp under her hands. Hank only realized it was the empath’s anger leaving them all hot under the collar when Alex unclenched his fists with a visible effort.

“No,” Stephanie hissed again. “You stay _away_ from my-”

Hank’s vision was swimming- she hadn’t lost it completely like when the professor had upset her, but the roiling mixture of fear and rage that choked the room was very nearly too much to bear- until, just as suddenly, it dissolved into overwhelming relief underscored by a bitter edge of fear.

“Shh, shh.”

James was struggling upright already, tugging Stephanie close as she collapsed over him with a quiet sob. “’m here. I’m okay.”

She pressed her face into the crook of his neck, hands edging up under his sweater as if his clothes were keeping them too far apart. James let his eyes fall shut as he concentrated on putting her back together.

“We’re just fine. You did so good, Steph.”

“He was helping.”

She turned her head without actually pulling away, seeking Jean’s eyes. “Your professor. They were- I mean-he says we gotta go, now.”

Alex frowned, looking from Stephanie to Jean, and then to Hank.

“Can he do that?”

He could, Jean thought, but surely he wouldn’t have broken in on Stephanie and James again after seeing the harm it could do. She closed her eyes, reaching out telepathically.

“I'll just-“

“No!”

Stephanie’s pure terror stopped them all cold. A few doors away, Hank realized, some of the younger kids were already in tears. “Don’t, it’s- don’t. Don’t do that.”

“Steph,” James murmured, gathering her closer as she slumped against him again. The almost physical wave of trauma retreated immediately.  "Just go slow, sweetheart." 

“We have to go,” Stephanie said again, visibly struggling to express herself. “They’re hurting him, cos they want-“

She pressed forward so they were face to face.

“I _won’t_ let them hurt you. They’re not _ever_ gonna-“

He stopped her by covering her lips with his.

“I know, Stephanie.”

Hank couldn’t help but wonder what Raven would have made of that- he was fairly sure she would have kicked anyone who tried a move like that on her squarely in the jaw. Alex and Jean were still trying to understand what had happened, muttering to each other in low voices about how someone could force Charles to reach out while making it impossible for anyone to reach back.

“Cerebro,” Hank realized. “If they have a version of that it’d be pretty much one-way except with a telepath.”

The others nodded- James, watching them with those startling silver eyes, reached over his girlfriend for the bag Erik had sent up with them. 

“They’re not doing _that_ again.”

Hank _felt_ his jaw drop as James revealed the helmet none of the X-Men had ever seen except in Magneto’s possession. Stephanie reached out to stroke one edge with cautious, almost affectionate fingers.

“You think he wanted _me_ to-”

The boy smiled, wry and teasing.

“It’s not for me, is it?”

It would be just like Erik, Hank realized with a pang, to send them to Charles only after arming them with the only protection he had against Xavier’s particular gifts. Behind them, Alex turned to Jean in utter confusion.

“Do _you_ know what they’re talking about?”

The unshed tears glistening in her eyes said she did.

“They can’t get to her if she's cut off.”

Stephanie shuddered bodily at the thought of it, but Hank found himself nodding encouragingly.   

“It'll work,” he offered, ignoring the thought of what it would be like for Stephanie. “If they’re relying on the professor’s powers that’ll keep them out all right.”

The empath smiled, but even with her shields in place they all saw her trepidation. James leaned in close to kiss her temple.

“It’s just for a little while, okay? To keep you safe.”

“To keep _you_ safe,” she countered, reaching out to close both hands slowly around Erik’s helmet. “Don’t let go.”

James tugged her so close she might as well have been sitting in his lap by the time she’d picked it up.

“Never.”  

“Okay. I’m gonna-”

She set the helmet on her head in one quick movement, breath leaving her body in a gasp as both their eyes filled with tears. The first time they'd been separated like that, Hank remembered, they'd both reached the conclusion that the other one had been killed.

“James-“

“I’ve got you.”

He kissed her neck, presumably because the rest of her face was out of reach. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere without you.”  

Stephanie was crying silently, shoulders shaking as she hung onto her anchor with all her strength.

“You're- I can't-“

“I know,” James murmured with a shaky, shaken smile of his own. “So then they can’t either, right? I promise I’m still here, Steph.” 

She opened her eyes, at least, laughing a little in pure relief. For a long moment they just stood there, staring at each other as they struggled with the separation Hank couldn’t begin to imagine. He was still watching, vision blurred with sympathetic tears he’d deny to anyone but Raven, when James met his eyes calmly over Stephanie’s shoulder.

“We need to go, like she said. Before they come for us.”

Alex baulked.

“You think he’ll send the sentinels?”

“They’ve sent them already,” Jean declared without indicating whether she’d figured that out telepathically or because it was the only move that made sense from Stryker’s point of view. “But they’re not interested in the students.”

She fixed Alex with a look at that was both pleading and commanding.

“They have the professor. And your brother.”

“Ours too,” Stephanie murmured, and smiled faintly when Jean nodded decisively.

“Did he show you where to go?”

He had, Stephanie confirmed, clinging to her anchor as they helped each other up. From the way Xavier had shared the images of how to get there Hank thought it was pretty clear what the professor had had in mind.

“We leave in five," he told them, sparing a grin before he left to get his gear together. “How much do you kids know about teleportation?”

**Author's Note:**

> What kind of maniac starts a whole different thing when there are FOUR currently going on? I just wanted teenage Bucky more than fighting-on-Asgard Bucky, I guess.
> 
> This is the same as that time I tried this X-Men thing on some months ago, except starting from the beginning instead of the end, and I won't give up and pretend it never happened because I actually know where I want to go this time.


End file.
